Here’s the Latest Kepler Orrery Video: the Orbits of the Planets Go ‘Round and ‘Round

byJason MajoronNovember 5, 2013

If you’ve ever wanted to know what 3,538 exoplanets look like spinning around their stars, here you go!

This is the third and latest installment of the mesmerizing Kepler Orrery videos by Daniel Fabrycky from the Kepler science team. It shows the relative sizes of the orbits and planets in the multi-transiting planetary systems discovered by Kepler up to November 2013 (according to the Kepler site, 3,538 candidates so far.) According to Daniel “the colors simply go by order from the star (the most colorful is the 7-planet system KOI-351). The terrestrial planets of the Solar System are shown in gray.”

Neat findings from a broken spacecraft. I noticed that in previous versions an acknowledgement was given to D. Fabrycky but this year their name has disappeared. Have they forgotten to give themselves credit ? Thanks for posting this Jason.